


Love in the Time of Science

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [90]
Category: Dollhouse, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-28 00:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6305815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>any, any, Love in the Time of Science (Emiliana Torrini)</i>. Rodney goes on a date with Physicist. Set post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love in the Time of Science

Rodney arrived at the restaurant about two minutes early for his date with Physicist. He was surprisingly nervous, given how this had been his idea. He stepped up to the lectern where a hostess in an elegant black cocktail dress was consulting a black leather binder full of reservations.  
  
“Reservation for Rodney McKay,” he said.  
  
The hostess looked up, and her eyes went wide. “Dr. McKay, your date is already here. He’s more than a little...nervous.”  
  
“Is he all right?” Rodney asked, following the hostess as she stepped out from behind the lectern and led him into the restaurant. He followed her across the dining room and through a doorway that led to the kitchen on one side and to the employee break room on the other.  
  
Physicist, dressed in a perfectly-tailored dark suit and blue shirt, was huddled over on a chair while a waitress patted his back and a waiter knelt beside him, watching him anxiously as he hyperventilated into a paper bag.  
  
Rodney went to him immediately, smoothed a hand over his back. "Hey, are you all right?"  
  
"John didn't tell you I'm kind of – of agoraphobic? 'S why it was always just me and Rocket."  
  
"Rocket?"  
  
"Pet raccoon." Physicist gazed at him with wide eyes, lashes wet with tears, though he didn't appear to have actually been crying.  
  
"John said you were _shy_ ," Rodney began, but stopped himself. It wasn't Physicist's fault that despite having a psychologist and an English Teacher in his brain, John hadn't been more specific about who Physicist was.  
  
Physicist kept huffing into the bag. The waiter and waitress backed up, cast questioning looks at the hostess.  
  
Rodney sighed. "Can I order something to go? I'd better get this guy home, and if I try to cook I'll probably burn the house down."  
  
The hostess looked skeptical, but the waitress said, "There's a quiet place. Out back. Where some of us go for more private breaks. Not too open. There's a table in there."  
  
The waiter said, "I'll go get you a menu."  
  
The waitress showed them to the back room. Physicist didn't let go of the paper bag – though he'd stopped huffing into it – until the door closed. As soon as it did, he curled in on himself and ducked his head.  
  
"I'm really sorry. I –"  
  
"It's not your fault," Rodney said. "It's mine. I should have asked John for more information."  
  
Physicist bit his lip. "I'm still sorry. I know you'd rather eat out there than in a closet back here like – like Harry Potter."  
  
"The whole point of coming here to night was to eat with you, wherever we eat," Rodney said. He wondered if this was how Evan had felt half the time, talking to stressed-out people on Atlantis day in, day out. The waiter arrived with a menu then, and Rodney was grateful for the distraction.  
  
When the waiter asked for their orders, they spoke at the same time, ordered the same thing, and Rodney was forcefully reminded of the fact that Physicist's imprint had been based at least partially on him.  
  
"Make sure it's citrus-free," Physicist said as he handed the menu back, and for this he met the waiter's gaze confidently. "We're both allergic."  
  
Rodney blinked. "You're allergic to citrus, too?"  
  
Physicist shrugged one shoulder. "Topher could make us anything. He preferred to build off of a base personality as much as possible. Too much could go wrong if he tried to make up too much of it himself."  
  
The waiter blinked at this strange turn in conversation but said deferentially, "Of course, citrus-free. Your drinks will be here momentarily."  
  
It was the waitress who brought them water, lemon-free, moments later.  
  
Rodney fully expected to have to be the one to carry the conversation, to keep his tone gentle and non-threatening, to learn as much about Physicist as he could (and try not to be disturbed when Physicist held his fork the way Rodney did and cut his meat the way Rodney did and was a mirror of him in a hundred different, highly unsettling ways). So he was startled when, halfway through the appetizer, Physicist said,  
  
"How can you believe in love?" 

Rodney blinked. "Pardon?"

"You're a scientist, a rational man, a thinking man, who approaches the world based on empirical evidence and reproducible phenomena." Physicist sipped his water and blinked at Rodney over the rim of his glass. Was he batting his eyelashes at Rodney? Because that was a dirty trick. "How can you put so much effort and energy into something that's a series of chemical reactions set off by another series of chemical reactions that's simply an organism responding to stimuli from its environment?"

"I get that you're aromantic and asexual –" Wait, would some of John's imprints hope to sleep with Rodney on their dates? Not that he was the kind of man who put out on a first date. But plenty of them had been designed basically to fulfill sexual and emotional fantasies –

Physicist shook his head. "Don't go getting distracted by some inherent biological features of my organism. I'm asking you, as one scientist to another, how you can subscribe to such...irrationality."

It was like someone (Topher) had taken Rodney's tendency toward ruthless logic and turned it up to eleven.

"I believe love belongs to a higher science," Rodney said. "We don't understand it yet. We can't quantify it and measure it, but perhaps one day we will. We didn't understand flight and gravity, but they existed and persisted, and we eventually learned to explain them. Evidence stands that one does not actually need a soul to ascend."

Both of them stilled at the reference to Elizabeth and her final, great sacrifice for the people of Atlantis.

"So no, I don't secretly believe in souls or anything else equally...spiritual," Rodney said. "But I do believe love is a phenomenon that we can observe, if not fully define and explain. Like wind. Our ancestors were unable to explain it, but they observed it and used it to do great things, to sail the oceans and discover new lands and trade knowledge and fly, or something like it. I think, with the proper application, love can be used to do great things."

"Terrible things, too. We used wind power to cross the seas and conquer and enslave." Physicist raised his eyebrows.

"That we did. But I'm not planning to do that in the name of love," Rodney said. "My plan is to see if, for the brief instant that is mortality, I can make one man – and his constant companions – happy."

And there. Finally. Physicist smiled.


End file.
